For the very first time ever since opening the place, we had a day in August where we overslept! We awoke at 9am in sheer panic before sprinting down to the breakfast area hoping that none of our guests had arrived for their morning meal yet. No such luck! There was at least one couple that was actively looking for us!! We apologised profusely, and thankfully, the husband and wife were a lovely couple, saying that they would have done the same if they had known. We’ve had some extra delightful guests stay with us this month – of particular note were 2 siblings with their husbands. Both couples were originally from Cookham but now live elsewhere – one sister in Germany while the other in Switzerland. They were utterly charming and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to them on a daily basis throughout their stay. Mornings this month have been extremely busy for the most part. I have been getting out of bed and rushing through the morning routine so that all guests have been tendered to. The routine involves: chopping the butter into sections, pouring the milk into the right containers for serving, making the fresh juices before arranging them with everything else on the dining tables, checking the fruit bowl contains exquisite specimens, inspecting the yoghurts as well as the Actimel, and the list goes on….
The end of August means the end to the summer season and the end of an experiment that we have been running by only taking direct bookings for our guest rooms (shutting out the reservation agents). And it has been an absolutely terrific return, so much so that I doubt we will ever be using booking agents again. It’s good to know that even with all of today’s tech-everything, that we can still fill our guest rooms with the good ‘old-fashioned’ methods of bookings by phone, stroll-ins and from our internet site!